Glósóli
by electric caterpillar
Summary: No Time Left - Lee says goodbye.
1. Lee & Ben

1/1

Lee & Ben

* * *

"I'm not so good, Lee," Ben said - his voice was so fine, so frail, passing almost under the grasp of Lee's hearing, and the adult hobbled by the throbbing absence of his arm loped around to slide down the paint-dappled brick wall to sit with splayed legs at the boy's side.

It was crisp up on the roof, despite the bright white light. The wind tousled the youth's hair atop the humble hung head, the threadbare ends of his sweatshirt. It strung the wet of the end of where Lee still felt his arm.

"What's up?"

Very theatrically, Ben opened his hands to empty air, actually grasping for words, and gasped at last utterly mirthlessly, "do you have to ask?"

Lee didn't. Arranging his arm on the array of his knees he nodded, deeply, acknowledging and then merely moving himself, making a tempo. He was subtly aware of Ben watching from under his disheveled fringe.

"I ruined everything." Ben whispered, as if speaking a confession.

"You made mistakes," Lee said after a silent instant as tense as a sprinter, and moved his hand across Ben's shivering shoulders soothingly. "We all do. Kenny has. I did."

"I killed people."

"So has Ken. So have I," Lee smiled bitterly and looked the youth exactly in the black liquid center of his fair round eyes, so much younger than the rest of him, the only honesty on his face. "I killed a man. A human man. Did you know that?"

Ben stared, astonished.

"I've killed more people and things that were people than I can count. I killed with my hands and I killed with my words. I killed with inaction. I've killed in every way possible. My hands," without considering it, Lee turned his head a little towards Ben's, holding his shoulder, a paternal gesture which perceptibly stilled the simmer of distress between them, and the elder continued in a quieted tone, with lamblike words, "my hands are red, Ben. They'll never wash clean."

Ben looked at the knuckles of his spare white hand crumpled in his lap. He looked exactly ahead of him, into nothing.

"This world gets into people. You get older and you become harder," Lee was saying, softly, sadly, and he felt now he was talking to something else, to the sky, to the future Clementine, "you become mean. You don't care. That hasn't changed. It's always been that way - you become something of the world.

"But not you.

"You are your own. You got something, Ben," Lee said. His hand on the child - really, he was only that - patted him less brusquely than it ever had. "You got something rare. You have ... integrity like grown men only dream of. In the end - " Ben's expression was collapsing - he would begin to cry - Lee put his arm gently around his back and Ben found a little fire and iron and looked with wet eyes Lee in the eye, and Lee smiled.

"In the end," Lee finished, very quietly, "you tried to do what was best for us - what was best for other people - even though it was hard, even though it scared you, you did the best thing you could of done."

Ben did cry. He pulled up his knees and his hood and closed like a butterfly in the cold.

Lee felt the impulse to hold him, which he defeated. Ben, he calculated, was just a little too old for that.

Instead he pat and pat and pat the boy's back and felt him cry and felt a tenderness for him, that impossible, asinine boy, not even ten years older than Clementine.

Did his weariness, his shock at the end of his arm soften him? Once he had wanted to strike the kid. Now he could almost cry for him. It was so strange to be at the end of his life.

"You're a good kid," Lee hushed.

"I'll watch her, you know." Lee was surprise to hear his voice, sturdy, sure, adult as he had ever heard it come from the kid. "Clementine. I won't ... I'll protect her."

Lee looked into the sky. He didn't feel well - numb - he felt only shivering apprehension and the cold air against the heat of his gruesome wound afloat on the ocean of his pain - but he saw as clearly as if projected before his eyes his girl alone somewhere in that mess of carnivore, in that horror, and he saw Ben's small white clean hands, and saw that they looked like hers.

"I know," Lee said finally, and was surprised to find Ben had sought out his own hand and squeezed it once.

"It'll be okay," Ben said, and smiled.

* * *

a/n: ... i don't think i care for this chapter lol

i'll probably rewrite it a little later but now i just want to get it up and get on with my life


	2. Lee & Kenny

2/3

Kenny & Lee.

* * *

"Hey man."

Kenny sat hard across from Lee around the ridiculous little table in the attic in which they were trapped. Plaster dust stuck to the gloss of sweat on his brow and grizzled jaw and the backs of his hands and stood out like snow on the shoulders and front of his soured dark shirt. The laborer discovered a bottle of some spirit beside his roost and caught it up, tossed it back, and passed it to Lee.

Lee nodded.

Beyond them, Christa and Omid labored noisily at the dilapidated wall, and Ben cowered, and beneath their feet, as well as a million animals shouted for their blood. Lee felt unimpressed. In fact, he felt a little warm.

"About ..." Kenny stared hard at his shoes and rubbed the back of his neck in a sheepish way, leaning hard over his knees in a slovenly teenager way. "About what I ... I mean ..."

The sentiment trailed away. They sat unspeaking in the mess of sound. Lee sipped. At last:

"I got some stuff to say."

"Don't." Kenny looked daggers. The creases where he scowled looked deeper than ever before, deep and dark and hard. "Don't do this Lee."

"I got to do this."

"Don't." Kenny touched his chin, his temple, his own elbows as if folding into himself. He fidgeted relentlessly. A look of pain so entire it astonished Lee out of his breath passed his grey features for an instant and reformed into his frown, pitch dark and hard as the surface of inhospitable water.

"I got to do this, my man. I got things to say to you."

"Don't." His voice cracked - quietly, he began to cry - so quietly he perhaps did not realize it. The youth and lady behind him tore at the wall urgently, obliviously. Impossibly, Lee smiled.

"I love you, man."

"Don't ..."

"I love you, my friend. You helped me. You saved my life. I didn't forget that. I'll remember that to the last second - I'll remember your kindness. I'll remember you were my friend."

Kenny put his face into his hands like a child.

"I loved your wife. I loved your son. I remember when he played detective with me. So cute. What a good kid." Lee smiled, wondering in himself at the abomination of it. A soft scintillating warmth poured into him, filling him up from his feet, the booze perhaps, or the clouds of a fever on the horizon, but it was peaceful, and sweet, and good. He did remember Duck, funny Duck, his girl's dear friend.

"Lee, no." Kenny wept now, openly. Slam, slam, slam went the hook of the hat rack, confronting the prospective escape route.

"You were my family." Lee touched his friend's shoulder and Kenny withered beneath it like it scalded him and cried and cried and cried.

"I can't do this," Kenny forced out from somewhere behind his hands and knees and the unfathomable ocean of his sadness. "I can't do this, Lee. I can't do this right now."

"Give me this," Lee said, softly, plaintively, and moved his hand on Kenny's shoulder, and Kenny was still. Lee moved to sit beside him on the odoriferous depressed cushions and slipped the elder man under his arm, and there he rocked him, and spoke with all his gentleness.

"I know you," Lee said. "I know who you are. I know you will do the right thing. I know you will protect my girl, and Omid, and Christa. And Ben. I know you won't ever give up."

Kenny put his arms around him them, desperately, and Lee felt the heat and salt of his sorrow, felt the tears which wet his throat and front like pouring blood, the weight and roughness of this simple, stalwart man which had come to be his only friend.

"Will you do that for me?" Lee coaxed, patting Kenny's shoulder and arm - the ghost of his own arm tickled where he imagined it lay on his knee - he murmured to Ken almost like a lover. "Will you take my girl? Will you protect her? Will you teach her?"

Kenny was nodding, unraveling under his arm with the mess of his face hidden in Lee's breast and nodding urgently.

"And love her, Ken." How tenderly sweet Lee felt as he thought of his girl. He thought he smelled flowers. Ken sang a sound into his collarbone which pulled a stitch above his stomach. "She's such a great kid. She's smart. She's so strong. She's so good."

"I'll take her. Of course I'll take her." Ken spoke a little too quickly, gasping it out. He rubbed his eyes in the deluged garments dressing Lee's breast. "Of course I'll take Clem. Of course. Of course."

"She loves you too," Lee said. "She loved Duck. She loved Kat. You all were so good for her."

"Of course I'll take her ..." Kenny sucked in an onerous breath and moaned. "Fuck, Lee. Fucking shit. Fucking God."

"It's okay, man." Lee's voice sounded hoarse, slow. He patted his friend's shoulder brusquely. "It'll be okay."

"No," Kenny shook as if he shouted it, but the sound came quiet as falling snow. "It ain't okay. It ain't okay."

"It'll be okay." Lee felt he was becoming ill. He felt far away. "It will be. You'll watch my girl, right? I'm going to go watch yours. Your wife and your son."

It was almost a joke, but Kenny opened his mouth around a simply awful sound. Christa and Omid could not be distracted from their desperate work but Ben, alarmed, stood over where they sat to see.

"Of course I'll watch her," Kenny said, accomplishing a tenuous grasp on himself, and looking Lee long in the face, and if not for the sodden state of him and their proximity and the constant sea-sound of metal on plaster and human exertion and inhuman hungers he might have been agreeing to have Clementine over to his family's care, where she would play with Duck and eat Katjaa's food safely beneath Kenny's sight and return after long hours into Lee's arms, on a secret earth, a million years ago.

The lump that had been Lee's arm shot up to embrace his friend, skidded to a halt and descended slowly, weighed by realization. Instead, Lee clasped Ken back to him with his only hand.

Ben may have been confused by what he intruded upon, but he only looked infinitely weary, standing over them, uncomfortable and purposeless as if burdened by too many limbs.

"I know you will, my friend."

"It'll be okay," Ken told him, and he wore now the twin to Lee's bizarre, quiet smile, a snowflake falling into a forest fire.

"It will," Lee agreed.

"I'm out!" Omid said breathlessly beyond them, sighing and swiping his forehead with his wife as they hobbled towards the rest. "Oh, shit ... are you guys okay?"

Christa - beautiful Christa, Lee though, smart woman, beautiful woman - needed only an instant to surmise what had happened, and she took Omid's elbow in her hand and directed him away from his inquiry. He turned his smile to her, which she could return only pathetically, but the thought counted.

"We're okay."


	3. Lee & Clementine

3/3

Lee & Clementine.

* * *

_My sweet girl,_

_I'm sick. I want to see you again, but I may not get the chance. If that happens, there are things I need to say to you._

_Respect weapons, but don't be afraid of them. They're just things. They're just tools you can use. Use them to protect yourself and other people. When you aim it, mean it. There will be times where you have to hurt other people, be ready for that, but always as your very last resort. People are precious. Every person has thoughts and feelings that will never happen again in the history of the world. Every person is someone's baby. Treasure them._

_Be safe. That means never assume you are safe. Lock doors and keep the keys. Know where other people are and know who they are and what they are doing. Know your friends, trust them, be good to them. Take care of yourself. Eat different kinds of foods. Not just chocolate bars. Sleep. You will learn it makes you feel good and makes you work better. You're so smart._

_Read. Wonder things. Ask questions. You are never out of time to learn. I always loved how interested you were in the world. Don't stop being interested, my smart girl._

_Don't despair. That means to never give up hope. You are such a wonderful girl, and you will become a wonderful, wonderful woman._

_You will find little ways to make life worth while. You will be happy, even only sometimes, even for only a moment. People will love you. I love you. Even though I'm gone, I love you._

_Thank you for being born. Thank you for saving me. Don't be scared. You can do anything._

_You are going to beat this world. I know you will. You are smart, and you are strong, and you are so brave._

_You're so good, my sweet girl, and I love you, I love you, my sweet, sweet girl, I love you._

_Lee Everett_

_forever_


End file.
